1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of instant messaging and, more particularly, to automatically controlling instant messaging settings based on calendar application entries.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional instant messaging (IM) systems provide a means of conducting electronic conversations between two or more computing device users with the immediacy of a spoken conversation. Instant messaging systems provide a manually configurable control mechanism that permits users to adjust their availability to other users. This control mechanism can indicate that a user is Off Line, Away from Desk, At Lunch, In a Meeting, Available, and the like. The control mechanisms can also block one or more incoming messages, automatically reply to incoming messages with a pre-configured response, and can remove a user from a colleague's list of IM contacts. Further, the control mechanisms can be specifically applied to all IM users, to a user category, or to one or more specified users.
While these control mechanisms can be very useful, conventional implementations of these control mechanisms require users to manually enable and disable the settings. The manual nature of the control mechanisms leads to users forgetting to make setting adjustments, thereby causing users to falsely indicate their communication availability. For example, an IM user can be in a meeting, where the user doesn't wish to receive IM messages for the duration of the meeting, yet that user can forget to turn off their availability to messages. Conversely, the user can remember to turn off availability at the start of a meeting, but forget to turn their availability back on when the meeting concludes. This general problem, inherent in manual control mechanisms, can manifest itself in many different scenarios, where a user inadvertently establishes an incorrect state for IM communications through forgetfulness.